


Traffic Lights

by wallmakerrelict



Series: Dean and Cas are Switches [3]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: BDSM, Bondage, Flogging, Hurt/Comfort, Knifeplay, M/M, Psychological Trauma, Sub!Castiel, Torture, Triggers, clothes-sharing, dom!Dean
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-08-30
Updated: 2012-08-30
Packaged: 2017-11-13 04:33:49
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,748
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/499524
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wallmakerrelict/pseuds/wallmakerrelict
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dean self-medicates his Hell-trauma by being Cas's dom. It works, up until Dean gets inadvertently triggered by a scene and Cas has to turn the tables on him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Traffic Lights

Cas is a pretty sight tonight where Dean has put him, naked, facing backwards on the rickety hotel chair, his wrists bound behind the chair back and his feet to the chair legs. His thighs are tied tightly to the armrests to keep him from moving his hips too much. A rope runs from his bound hands down, under the chair, and around his neck so that it tightens every time he tries to free himself by lifting his arms. 

Not that he's tried to free himself. Not for the last ten minutes or so. He's given in to his bondage, learned all the limitations it puts on his movement. He knows just how high he can raise his hands. He knows just how much room he can put between the chair back and his chest. He knows how to flinch forward without chafing his legs on the ropes when Dean brings the flogger down on his back. 

Even with his healing factor turned off, Cas is a tough bastard. It takes four or five good lashes in the same place before a welt starts to form. To get the beautiful pattern of lash-marks that now graces Cas's shoulders, it's taken Dean half an hour of intermittent whipping. At one point he even had to take a break to rest his arm and eat the half-sandwich left in the fridge (leaving Cas tied up, of course). But the end product speaks for itself. Two sets of red stripes begin just on either side of Cas's spine and fan outward toward his shoulders, raised and bruising, like a mockery of wings. 

Cas's head is bowed against the back of the chair, and his breaths are getting ragged. He's been moaning and screaming for most of the scene, but the last couple of lashes haven't produced more than a hitch in his breath. Dean is starting to wonder if the game is almost finished. 

"You had enough?" Dean asks, twirling the flogger lightly in his hand. 

"No," Cas replies instantaneously, but the druggy, dazed quality of his voice makes Dean pause. 

"Then ask me for one more."

That makes Cas hesitate while he screws up his resolve, but finally he breathes, "Hit me again."

"What's the magic word?" Dean can't help but smile as he says it. 

Cas barks out something between a groan and a laugh. "Please."

Before he's even gotten the whole word out, Dean swings his arm and lands a punishing blow right on top of Cas's already-raw skin. Talking to Dean has dragged Cas out of his zone, and he can't help but scream at the flash of pain. 

But a few stuttering gasps later, he says clearly, "Please hit me again." 

Dean obliges, on the other shoulder this time. And yes, it's beautiful the way Cas's whole body jerks under the sting of it, but this time his scream fades out into something like sobbing. 

It takes Cas far too long, this time, to be able to say, "Please… hit me again," and when he does, his voice is shaking. 

Dean is good at this. He's good at hurting people, good at reading when a person is about to break. He's good at it because it used to be his job to push people past that breaking point again and again, and past new breaking points that they didn't even know they had until everything about them was in shards on the floor of Hell. 

But this is different. They've talked about it over and over – the reasons why they both want it, and how to do it safely. And once they started, Dean could have sworn that it made his memories of Hell just a little easier to deal with, strange as that was. Hell was this huge, incomprehensible, horrific thing that had happened to Dean – so much so that he had trouble wrapping his head around it. And since he couldn't process it in his waking mind, it always lay in wait to ambush him. Until he started this thing with Cas. With Cas, he can give himself these small, controlled tastes of torture and temper them with unabashed affection before and after. With Cas, violence becomes a game that they play together instead of a weapon Dean wields against his victims. With Cas, Dean's memories of Hell are diluted in his memories of Cas curled up against him, kissing his neck as he says, "Next time, hit me harder." With Cas, the whole point is to _not_ break him. 

So Dean lowers his arm and lets the commanding tone drop out of his voice. "Red, yellow, or green?" he asks, and with that it's as if everything has been put on pause. 

It takes Cas a few seconds to get back into the kind of headspace that will let him answer truthfully, but eventually he sighs and admits, "Yellow." 

Dean rewards him with a kiss to the nape of his neck for his good, honest answer. Then he puts down the flogger and picks up Cas's sword. 

Cas shivers as soon as he hears the flat of the blade being tapped gently against Dean's leg, but some of the tension goes out of his shoulders and he starts breathing a little easier. The sword isn't a punishment; it's meant to pull Cas back from the edge and refocus the scene on trust instead of pain. 

The cold of the metal makes Cas flinch when Dean rests it on his shoulder, but it cools the angry, red welts there and Cas makes a small appreciative sound. 

Dean doesn't speak or demand anything of Cas. He just slides the flat of the blade against Cas's skin, down his back and over his arms. Sometimes he turns it just enough so that the edge digs into skin, so that Cas can feel its sharpness, especially at sensitive spots like Cas's flanks and the crooks of his elbows. 

Cas doesn't speak either. He just rides the high of the strange disagreement between his body, which tells him that he is in terrible danger, and his mind, which trusts Dean enough to know that he is perfectly safe. 

Dean touches the tip of the sword to the back of Cas's neck and runs it down the length of his spine, so lightly that it almost tickles. Then he counters that sensation by digging the point in hard enough to leave a little indentation. Cas sucks a breath through his teeth. Dean smiles. He might tease, but he would never break skin. Not with the sword. Not unless Cas asked him to. 

"Dean…" Cas moans, his voice almost breaking with need, "Please, Dean." The next press of the blade forces a stream of words out of his mouth, "Dean, Dean! Ah! Please, I want… I want you to cut me! Please, just a little. You won't harm me. I promise. Just a little cut. Please. I want to bleed for you. I want to bleed my grace onto your hands!"

Fuck. 

But even though Cas is asking for it, even though he's asking for enthusiastically, and even though that image is making Dean's dick throb until it's rock-hard, Dean resists the urge to follow Cas's request. Instead, he grabs a fistful of Cas's hair, yanks his head back, and presses the blade up against his throat. 

Cas makes a high, pleading sound as Dean twists his fingers tighter and presses the blade harder against pulsing skin. "You want me to cut you?" Dean growls into Cas's ear. 

"Yes!" Cas chokes, his Adam's apple bobbing against the blade. 

"You want me to hurt you? Make you bleed? Use you up until there's nothing left?"

"Yes, yes!" 

Dean's voice softens as he says, "There's nothing you wouldn't let me do to you right now. That right?" 

Cas's voice is softer too, matching Dean's tone. "Yes." 

There's a clang as Dean drops the sword on the ground, and Cas gasps a breath as the pressure is released from his throat. Dean keeps his grip on Cas's hair as he says, "Ask me again when our dicks aren't hard, and I'll think about it." 

Dean lets go of Cas's hair, and Cas groans disappointedly as his head bobs forward. But he knows that Dean is right. Everything they do has been talked out beforehand. Cas doesn't get to change the script in the middle of the show.

Besides, the scene is over. Dean is tired, and he can tell that Cas is almost at the end of his endurance. It's almost time to curl up together and trade some well-deserved aftercare. 

But Dean can't resist picking up the flogger from where he'd dropped it on the floor and flicking it against Cas's back, just once more for good measure. 

Cas isn't expecting it. He stutters in mid-breath, chokes on nothing, and gives a whimper mixed with a cough. It's a strange sound, and probably not one that Cas could repeat even if he tries. But it triggers something in Dean. It's not Cas's fault, and it's not Dean's fault, but for some reason that surprised, pained noise takes Dean directly back to a memory that he didn't even know he was still carrying around. 

And suddenly he is back in Hell, and it's not anyone special who's on his rack today, just a girl, just one of countless, and he's got a cat o' nine tails in his hand that he's using to rip into her belly, not giving her any break between blows, and with each swing the barbs on the ends of the tails tear away a little more of her flesh until blood is spattering the floor, and when her body wall finally gives way and her glistening pink entrails slither out of the hole that is the sound she makes. That exact sound. 

And it is all Dean can do not to fall on the floor and puke up that sandwich he ate fifteen minutes ago, because suddenly being in his own body is so unbearable that he wants to crawl out of his skin. His hand tightens on the handle of flogger until his fingers start to go numb, and he wishes desperately that it were the cat that he once wielded in Hell so that he could turn it on himself and take pieces out of himself until pieces are all that is left.

"Dean?" Cas says, sensing that something is wrong even after all that Dean has put him through. 

Dean doesn't know how, with his throat closing up on him, but he manages to choke out, "Red."

Cas is on him in an instant and a flutter of invisible wings. The ropes that bound Cas to the chair fall slack, and Dean can see that every mark that he put on Cas over the course of the night is gone, healed with no more than a thought. Cas's eyes hold Dean's steady. His breathing is even and deep, and he silently encourages Dean to mimic it, to slow the panting that's bordering on hyperventilation. One hand is on Dean's face, and the other closes over his fingers where they still keep their death-hold on the flogger. 

"Dean," he says, never looking away, "Let it go." Slowly, Dean uncurls his fingers from the handle while Cas twists it free of his grip. When it falls out of Dean's hand and into Cas's, Cas immediately drops it on the floor, and it is forgotten. 

Dean's hands, free now, clutch at Cas's back and shoulders. The welts there have disappeared, leaving only smooth skin and solid muscle. It's a comforting, familiar landscape and Dean clings to it, pulling Cas harder against himself, pressing his face to Cas's shoulder and willing himself not to hurl (or worse, cry). 

But Cas disentangles Dean's hands from behind his back and, gently, wraps his fingers around Dean's wrists. Slowly, giving Dean plenty of time to protest if he feels inclined, he leans Dean backwards until they are both lying on the bed, Cas on top of Dean, pinning him. Dean's wrists are still in Cas's grip. And as soon as Dean realizes that he cannot move, the panic, oddly, begins to fade. 

Somehow Cas instinctively knows that this is what Dean needs right now: to feel the weight of him, and how easily he overpowers Dean. To know that Dean hasn't managed to harm him. To have his weapons taken away from him. 

"Cas…" Dean breathes, and now he really is crying, dammit, but Cas doesn't seem to notice or care. He just nuzzles his face into the crook of Dean's neck, ignoring the tears that are smearing into his hair. 

"Let it go," he says again, even though Dean's hands are empty now, "Let it go."

Slowly, Dean stops gasping for air and begins matching Cas breath for breath. His tears stop. He could swear that his heart is even beating in time with Cas's. He's still covered in a cold sweat, the room is still spinning a little, and he still really wants to throw up, but he's in control. 

No. He's in Cas's control, and he surrenders to it willingly and gratefully. 

Cas rolls off of him. In the blink of an eye, Cas is fully dressed again without so much as a hair out of place. "Get up," he says, "Put your clothes on." 

Dean has been playing this game with Cas long enough to recognize the difference between a suggestion and an order, and those are orders. The realization almost makes him weak in the knees with relief. After being clobbered by the memory of having more control over other people's souls than he had any right to have, all he wants is for someone else to make decisions for him, even decisions as simple as getting up out of bed. 

He stands, waits to make sure he's steady on his feet, and begins collecting his clothes from where they've been dropped around the hotel room. 

But he stops when Cas says, "Not those. Get something clean out of your bag."

Immediately, he drops the bundle of clothes that he's picked up and instead retrieves the duffel from under the bed. Cas watches as Dean pulls on a pair of blue jeans, but when he goes to pick up a gray shirt Cas speaks up. 

"Not that one." 

Dean's hand hovers over the stack of clothes in the bag, then moves over to a greenish plaid shirt before looking up for Cas's approval. Cas shakes his head. Dean moves the top two shirts out of the way and pulls out the only remaining clean one – black. 

"Put it on," says Cas. Dean obliges. 

Dean is getting the hang of this now. There are only two clean pairs of socks in the bag, so he holds them both up for Cas's inspection. After a moment of consideration, Cas points at the pair in Dean's left hand. 

After Dean has put his socks on, Cas reminds him, "Boots." Dean dashes to the door to get them and, on instinct, grabs his coat off the nearby hook. 

But then Cas is there in a heartbeat, cornering Dean against the doorway and holding out his hand. "Give that to me," he says. Dean quickly hands over his coat. With one smooth motion, Cas shrugs out of his overcoat and swings Dean's coat around his shoulders. Then he hands his own coat to Dean, complete with the order to, "Wear this." 

And maybe it doesn’t fit very well, and maybe it looks a little ridiculous with the rest of Dean's outfit, but Dean can't find it in him to care. As soon as he pulls it on, he's surrounded by Cas's scent. It's like being held in a loose embrace everywhere he goes. 

Not to mention that fact that Cas looks absolutely stunning in Dean's leather jacket. 

Cas grabs the keys off the kitchenette table and tosses them to Dean. Finally, Dean feels good enough to bother asking, "Where are we going?"

That's when Cas says the greatest combination of words in the English language. 

"I'm taking you out for cheeseburgers and pie." 

As they walk across the parking lot toward the Impala, Dean's nausea fading away now as it's replaced by hunger, Cas reaches for Dean's hand. He holds it lightly, tugging until Dean meets his eyes. "Green?" he asks. 

Dean laces their fingers together and holds on tight. "Green."

**Author's Note:**

> Incorporating personal trauma into BDSM is not something that should be done lightly. It helps some people process their trauma (ideally with the help of a sex-positive therapist). For others, it is extremely triggering. This fic is written from Dean's point of view, and his narration should not be taken as universal advice. Likewise, the way that Cas handles Dean's triggering episode is strongly influenced by the fact that he can read minds. Never restrain a person who is having a panic attack.


End file.
